Author: Stolen Childe
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or various literary works mentioned herein.
Rating: PG
Warning: spoilers for Fool For Love, slash, unbeta'd
Pairing: Spike/Angel
Author's Notes: I felt like writing something, so I did. This is what came of it, a look into the more intellectual side of Spike.
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He felt like writing, but not quite knowing what to say, his hand hovered uselessly over the thick paper, little dribbles of ink from the fountain pen falling, wasted to the surface. He hadn't written in a very long time, not since he was so wrapped up in Cecily. But she had refused him and he had died. But now he felt like writing again. Words flew useless around his mind, not linking themselves together or forming any specific stanza. Just hovered and snickered at his utter defeat. He had been a terrible poet alive, he was now a terrible poet dead.
Sitting in his small apartment over Evil Inc. Spike's soul warred with his demon. There was very little to occupy him now a days, and felt that taking up writing once more would be the perfect outlet for his frustrations for a certain broody sire. Chocolate gaze, velvet stare. Spike scowled at his own foolishness, glaring down on his paper. Utterly pathetic. He closed his eyes, thinking of the time when he was alive, when his heart beat when words linked themselves. Not very well albeit, but they linked. He was so set on form and rhyming then. If one begins intending to write a sonnet, one must write a sonnet. Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter. Sighing his gaze shifted to a pink and violet soft covered book. In the elegant scrawl across the front Shakespeare's Sonnets was printed. Shakespeare had been one of the best. Spike as William had admired his works for hours. Poured over his plays and let himself get lost in the stories. Yeats, the poet of the Irish revival. A truly remarkable time which Spike had allowed himself get sucked into after his turning. Donne: metaphysical mastery. Chaucer: comedic ingenuity. All men Spike had admired. Authors Charlotte Brontë and her novel Jane Eyre. Dickens and all his works, including William's personal favourite Oliver Twist.
Spike sighed and leaned back, his chair protesting loudly at the forced weight. To write like them had been his foolish human dream. Now what was he? Angel's kept boy at Evil Inc. Only other ensouled vampire in the world fighting the good fight and some such nonsense.
"Mother was right I should have been a teacher." Spike muttered, turning his attentions back to his poetry and watching the dark blue-black blotches dry slowly on the paper. As if drawn by itself, Spike's hand went back to his ink well and he began to sketch, quick and scratchy, cross hatching for shading. His hand flowed fluidly as if he was using his elegant scrawl and when he was finished, some fifteen minutes later, he looked down to see Angelus starring back at him darkly amused eyes. It wasn't as good as Angel's work, but it was good in its own right.
"What I can't capture in word, I will in image." then he began to draw again, liberally coating the paper with images of Angel in all his various incarnations and when that was up, he drew him again in all his varying expression.
His pen tip was split, his hand was stained not as it had been since his university days. His finger nails dark with the ink. But he was at last satisfied. Angelus was staring back at him as was Angel as was Liam as Spike had imagined him and how Angel had been through the years. Beautiful, frightening, sad, glorious and just Angel. Then again not of his own accord he sought out a new pen swapped his ink bottle and at last words began to link, to flow, to form.
At last Spike looked down, he read the words, he blinked. It wasn't one of his, never one of his but he smiled, remembering it after all these years. Right in the centre of the images of Angel it stood, bold in Spike's Victorian scrawl. Absolutely perfect.
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense --
Thy adverse party is thy advocate --
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessory needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
Spike pushed himself free from the desk, leaned back and stretched high above his head. He jumped only slightly when strong cool arms looped around his waist before he turned into the embrace. A gentle hand splayed against a strong jaw he leaned up and placed a light kiss on pliant lips.
"Thinking about me?" Angel asked, amused.
Spike shrugged, "Little bit." He smiled into the second kiss. Absolutely perfect.
The End
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Please review! The sonnet is Shakespeare's Sonnet 35, one of my favourites written to the Young Man. I felt it described Angel and Spike perfectly.